Valve Still Believes in VR as Steam Frame Targets Flat Games

Valve told developers in Korea that valve still believes in vr, while acknowledging that many Steam Frame owners use the headset for conventional flatscreen games. The comments came at Steam Indie Connect on October 27. Inven first reported the remarks, which Road to VR and MIXED later covered.

Valve's position on VR

Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson from Valve's Steam business team spent most of the session discussing AI-generated content, game clones and wishlists. Asked about curation and visibility for VR games, Giardino said: "We still believe in virtual reality."

He described VR's continuing content and audience problem as a cycle. Developers wait for more buyers before investing in VR software, while players wait for more games before buying hardware. Major flatscreen releases arrive every week and compete with VR for players' time and spending.

• Audience and content: developers need a larger VR audience, while buyers want more VR games.
• Competition for time: large flatscreen releases pull attention and spending away from VR.
• Hardware cost: rising RAM and memory prices made Steam Frame more expensive than Valve wanted, causing potential newcomers to hesitate.

Giardino also cited Valve's work beyond its own headset. This includes the Steam Link app for Meta Quest and support for the OpenXR standard. He presented Steam Frame as one part of a wider VR ecosystem.

Road to VR said its published quotes were machine-translated from Korean and that no video of the session appeared to be available.

Steam Frame's role

Steam Frame launched as a low-latency PC streaming headset that also runs standalone VR and non-VR apps on SteamOS, according to Valve's Steamworks documentation cited by MIXED. Playing regular Steam games on a large virtual screen is therefore an intended use, not misuse.

Steam Frame launched with 256GB and 1TB storage variants priced at $1,059 and $1,299. In the UK, BBC reports prices of £889 for 256GB and £1,089 for 1TB.

Update (2026-11-01): VR.org News reports that Tom Giardino apologized to VR developers because Steam Frame's high price made potential customers hesitate. VR.org News also reports that Steam Frame launched with 256GB and 1TB storage variants priced at $1,059 and $1,299. BBC reports UK prices of £889 for 256GB and £1,089 for 1TB.

Road to VR's Scott Hayden interprets Valve's approach as a strategy: position Steam Frame as a general gaming device that also plays VR, then hope a larger install base brings developers back. That plan faces pressure while component prices remain high and Meta has scaled back its VR funding.

What developers and players can expect

Valve announced no new VR-specific programs or store changes at the event. It did not promise a new wave of first-party VR games to resolve the content and audience deadlock.

For players, Valve's message is that VR remains part of Steam's future, while Steam Frame is also meant for ordinary Steam games. For developers, a wider audience may come from hardware used for both formats rather than from a separate expansion of VR-only software.